The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

people you had been, but different from any one of them. It was possible to start again, to build a new life. If only . . .

Her gaze rested again on the photograph of the young man in dress uniform grinning shyly by her mother’s side on the church steps. She wished she could hate him for what he had done to her. She wished she could have met him, if only to dislike him. She wished at least she had got somewhere near the truth. Perhaps then she could have forgotten.

She sat for a long time gazing into the flames of the gas fire, before reaching a decision. She drew the phone towards her and dialled for a taxi.

*

Blair led her through to the room at the back, and the view over the river. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again so soon,’ he said. It had been less than a week since the doctor had declared her fit enough to return home. He took her coat.

‘I didn’t mean to disturb you. I needed to talk.’ She touched the back of the chair she had sat in for so many hours, talking, listening, learning to trust again, and feeling scar tissue grow over mental wounds. ‘May I?’

‘Of course.’ He waved her into the seat. ‘I’d have thought we’d done enough talking to last a lifetime.’ He settled back into his armchair and lit his pipe. It was true, he thought. They had talked a great deal. Mostly about her father, feeding her longing for detail – about his life, where he had been, what he had done. But his instinct told him that she had returned now to ask the questions he had hoped she never would. ‘What have you been up to?’ Perhaps he hoped he could deflect her.

She shrugged. ‘I’ve put the house up for sale, and I’ve applied for a job. In Edinburgh.’

‘Nice city. Doing what?’

‘Secretarial. A lawyer’s office.’

‘Seems a bit of a waste. I thought you were going back to college.’

She toyed with the buckle on her belt, avoiding his eyes. ‘I changed my mind. It just seemed like a step back. Anyway, I don’t think I was cut out to be a journalist.’

He watched her for a few moments, until the silence forced her to look up. ‘Know anyone there? In Edinburgh?’ She shook her head. He nodded. ‘Running away, then.’

She was stung to defend herself. ‘I’ve got nothing to run away from.’

‘Except the past.’ He tamped down the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. ‘Only you can never do that. You carry your past with you always. Wherever you run, you’ll only find yourself, waiting there for you when you arrive, like an old friend – or enemy – you can’t get rid of.’

‘You always have all the answers, don’t you, Sam?’

‘If I’d had all the answers at your age, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I suppose you’ve got to find your own answers.’

She tutted with irritation. ‘Maybe when I’m your age I’ll be as smug as you.’

He grinned. ‘Coffee?’

‘No thank you.’ She was still annoyed.

‘Well, I’m making some anyway. If you change your mind give me a holler.’ He eased himself out of his chair.

‘I want to know about the massacre in Aden.’

He hesitated for only a moment. ‘I already told you about that. A long time ago. Milk, no sugar, isn’t it?’ He headed for the kitchen.

‘You told me a version of it,’ she called after him. ‘I want to know the truth.’

He stopped and turned, sudden anger in his eyes. ‘Do you? Why? So you can hate him? Consign him to the past, like another bad memory? No, no, that would be too easy, Lisa. It’s far easier to hate than it is to love. If you’re going to feel anything for him it should be pity. And you should carry that pity around with you for the rest of your life, and maybe one day you’ll be able to forgive him!’

Tears sprang to her eyes. ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted me to pity him.’

‘No, he wouldn’t. He’d have hated it. And he’d have rather you’d hated him. You’re just like him, you know. He always wanted the easy way out, too.’ He put his hand to his forehead. ‘No, that’s not true. I’m being unfair to him. He took it all on himself. All the responsibility, all the guilt. But his way of coping with that was by shutting everything and everyone else out. He just died inside, emotionally.’

He turned and stared out across the river. ‘We all died a little.’ His laugh was without humour. ‘They talk about the innocent victims of war. But sometimes the real victims are the ones who survive.

‘Oh, yes, we walked into that village and killed all those people. It was no accident, and I’m not going to try and excuse it. We lost control. A moment of madness. It happens. But, you see, what happened, happened as much to us as it did to them. They died, but we had to live with it, and I think dying was the easier of the two.’

A small boat drifted by, a young couple in winter coats and scarves laughing at some shared intimacy.

Blair turned towards Lisa. ‘What I told you before, about what happened – it was our defence at the court martial. It’s what we told our wives and our girlfriends and our parents. It’s what we wanted the world to believe, what we wanted to believe ourselves. How could you tell anyone, or even admit to yourself, what it was you’d found inside? Something dark and evil that you’d never even suspected was there. Something so rotten you can’t ever wash the taste of it from your mouth. Like coming face to face with the devil, only to realize you’ve seen the face before, looking back at you from the mirror when you shave in the morning.’

The tension in the room was electric. Lisa sat rigid, her look of